New Worlds
by ParagonDreams
Summary: After evacuating the Bastion, The Kid, The Stranger, The Survivor, and The Singer have embarked on the Dusk and Dawn. Floating ever further from their shattered world, they find themselves crash landing in a new place... Republic City. [My first online fic, so reviews are most welcome.]
1. Interrogation

Toph Bei Fong was not having a good week. Ever since Aang bent Yakone backwards into a prison cell, things were supposed to quiet down. Sure there would still be crime, but she didn't need a giant chunk of... something falling from the sky. Luckily however, that smoldering pile of wreckage had been inhabited by two unconscious survivors. It was time for the Chief of Police to get some answers.

The Kid came to with someone in a white uniform washing some dried blood out of his hair. Felt weird... like only water was touching him... but then he was paying more attention to the headache.

"Ah, you're up." the lady in white said. "Stay still, I'm not done here yet."

Kid didn't move. The headache was fading away. Like it was being chased off by the cold water. He could swear he could hear some kind of music... like the water was singing. He chalked it up to the concussion. The singing stopped shortly after the pain did. "Can you stand?" she asked. The kid gets up, surefooted and strong. He ran his fingers over his head and was surprised to find that not only was there not so much as a scrape, his hair was bone dry. He raised a questioning eyebrow at the lady in white. "What? she asked, confused. "You've never seen a waterbender before?" Kid shook his head. "Where are you from?" she asked.

"That's exactly what I want to know." said another voice from the doorway. The metal door creaked open of its own accord and a stern woman clad in steel stepped into the room. It was only then that the Kid noticed just what kind of room it was. No windows, a metal door, and a metal table he'd just been lying on. The Marshalls used rooms like this for interrogations. That meant, somehow, that he was in trouble with the law.

"Ma'am," the Kid began. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you." The woman's blind eyes narrowed.

"Try me," she said, pulling a couple of chairs up out of the ground. Kid looked surprised for a moment, then shrugged and sat down.

"Alright," he said. "but send for something to drink. This is a long story." The kid began to tell the tale from the beginning starting with a brief explanation of Caelondia followed with the morning he woke up to find the world reduced to cornflakes. It ended after dragging Zulf out of the Tazal Terminals, and leaving the Bastion behind. The Chief was having trouble believing him, but she knew that he wasn't making up a word of it. It was particularly difficult to lie to her. After his story, she had two possibilities. He was crazy, or he was telling the truth. Two pots of tea later, the story was told. "Sorry if it got a bit dull in places," the kid says over an empty cup. "Rucks tells that story a lot better."

"Rucks..." the Chief began. "Is that the other one we found?"

The kid dropped his cup, crestfallen. "..One?"

"Yeah, sorry kid." she said, surprised at her genuine concern. "An old man, by the sound of him. He's locked up in one of our holding cells."

"You got one of those... waterbenders for him?" Kid asked. "Did I get the word right?"

The Chief raised an eyebrow at that. Perhaps he really wasn't from around here. "Yeah, he'll be fine. He was in better shape than you were when we found you." She tried pouring another cup of tea, but only drops fell from the pot. "So, you really don't know what benders are?"

Kid shrugged. "News to me. Sure could have used them after the Calamity."

"Hrm," she frowned. "Had you pegged for an earthbender."

"Wait," the Kid stopped. "There's more?"

"Water, Earth, Fire, and Air," The chief smiled. "Only one airbender left right now though."

"Damn..." the Kid said. "So what happens now?

"Now, I get another pot of tea and you can tell me what brought down your ship." She said, her eyes narrowed. You didn't get to be chief of police by missing details.

"My turn, Chief." the Kid said. "You get chapter two when I get a couple of minutes with the old man."

Toph thought about it for a while, then said. "Fine, I guess. Need to swing by the ladies room anyway." She waved her hand and the door swung open. "I'll have him brought here in a few minutes." She walked out of the room, locking the door behind her. "You getting all this Sergeant?" She said to the man standing outside with a typewriter.

"Every word ma'am." he nodded. "What do you make of him?"

"He's telling the truth," she said. "So either he's an inventive kind of crazy or this city just got a lot stranger."


	2. Conviction

"Hey Stranger," the Kid said as Rucks was led into the room by Chief Bei Fong. Rucks was dumbfounded.

"How are you still alive?" he asked, with his mouth hanging open. "I watched the mast come down on your skull!"

The kid raised an eyebrow. "Oh please, I lived through the Calamity. A chunk of wood isn't going to stop me."

"Don't get cocky kid," the chief barked. "If the corporal who put your head back together hadn't scraped you off the ground, you'd be buried by now." The kid loosened his bandana. "Point taken."

"Now," the chief bent a stool up for Rucks and sat back down on her own. "Answers. What happened to your ship?"

"Last I checked it was a pile of scrap on the outskirts of town." the Stranger chuckled. "Frankly though, your guess is as good as hours. It started when our little floating paradise ran afoul of something wrong."

"Calamity rock?" the chief asked.

"A monster." Rucks replied before launching into the tale.

"We decided to sail wherever the eddies took us, and we wound up far from what was left of home. Things were going alright until the world around us faded to black. All we could see were glowing yellow eyes peering out of the darkness in pairs. It was all we could do to fight them off. Even Zia had the pike in her hands, trying to keep the critters safe. There was no reason to those... things. It was like killing was the only thing on their minds. The little imps were bad enough, but they just kept getting bigger. Went through damn near every bottle of tonic on the ship just trying to stay alive. Kid was battle drunk on doomshine and wherewhiskey, and it was barely doing any good. Then the big one came.

It was like a man made of ink the size of a skyscraper, with a gaping hole where his heart ought to be. It just kept slamming at the ship. It struck at the mast, at the engines, at the core... It was like it knew just how to destroy us. It would have managed it too if it wasn't for the Knight."

"Wait a second," the kid interrupted. "What knight?" Rucks didn't miss a beat.

"After the big guy knocked you out against the mast, this bolt of light came out of the shadows. It was some stranger wrapped in metal plate from head to toe. Had the strangest sword I've ever seen. And the things he could do... it was almost like magic. He rained lightning down from above, and cast fire up from below, but that thing just kept swinging. Every time he missed the Knight, he hit the poor old Dusk and Dawn... til she just couldn't take no more."

"And that's when you fell out of the sky?" asked the chief.

"No, that's when she broke apart, right down the middle. THEN we fell out of the sky. Last thing I remember is watching the mast slam into the kid before we hit the ground."

There was a silence as the chief of police regarded the strangers, weighing the stories against the facts that she knew. She knew they were found in what appeared to be boat wreckage on the outskirts of town where most people thought a meteor came down. Her seismic sight had told her differently on impact though... she'd felt a meteor hit the ground before. She knew that neither of them were lying, at least they didn't think they were. She knew that they had never had experience with bending of any kind. But she just couldn't wrap her head around their story. She'd need to see some proof, something she couldn't explain away before she could believe them. She wanted to... but then she'd wanted to believe a lot of tall tales in her time as the law.

"I'm sorry, but I don't believe you just yet. Not until I get some proof. I'm going to have to have to place you in custody until I'm certain you're not going to have a psychotic episode in the middle of the street." She said, calmly, a note of sadness in her voice. She felt a twinge in the earth... it was from the kid. Something about him just changed.

"I'm sorry too," the Kid said, standing and cracking his knuckles. "I respect you as an officer of the law, but I'm short a few friends. I'm not going to stay here while I could be out there trying to find them." He made for the door. Toph stood before him, her heels dug into the had earth.

"The only way out is through me kid." he said, glaring at him with unseeing eyes. Most folk would have backed down... but then the Kid wasn't anything like most folk. He tried to be as gentle as he could about it. He put one hand on her shoulder and shoved her into the wall three yards to the right. Toph got a real good look at him, for a split second, and she saw the incredible strength that it took to knock a seasoned earthbender to the ground. His every muscle, every tendon and ligament, was like iron cable and bowstrings. The Kid had neglected to mention just what kind of equipment he had to swing around for two terms on the Rippling Walls.

Bei Fong blinked twice and was back on her feet in seconds. Confusion and rage dueled for a few seconds in her head before she regained her compusure. It was all the Kid needed to get to the door... but Rucks was faster. He hooked a leg around the Kid's and pulled it out from under him, put his foot down on his chest when he landed.

"THINK RAYNE!" he barked at the Kid with more anger than he'd mustered in years. "Where are we supposed to go? Where did Zulf and Zia land, and how are we to get there? We aren't in Caelondia anymore. You can't just charge through like you did in the Terminals."

Kid didn't say anything until Rucks hauled him off the ground and sat him back down on the stool. "For what it's worth," he told the chief. "I'm sorry I lost my head."

The chief dusted herself off. "There was a time I'd have done the same thing," she said coolly. "Stand down!" she barked.

"Uh," the Kid began. "I'm not doing anything." He started raising his hands above his head.

"Not you," she said, striding to the door. "Them." She opened the door, allowing the kid to see no less than seven benders poised to strike with ice, stone, and balls of fire. "Take them to the low security block."

"Ma'am?" one of the leutenants questioned.

"Maximum security wouldn't stop them anyway." she said, walking back to her office. She kept a bottle of sake underneath one of her floor tiles, and she had a feeling she'd be needing it tonight."


	3. Ba Sing Se

Zulf woke up to the taste of blood and a room that was too damned bright. He tried to sit up, but it only made him dizzy. "Easy now," an old man said. An unfamiliar one. "You took quite a fall. I must say, I'm impressed you survived."

"Yeah..." Zulf said,trying to will his way back to some kind of vision. "I seem to be good at that."

"How many fingers am I holding up?" the old man asked, presenting digits.

"Forty three." Zulf said, not really counting. There were clearly more than there ought to be.

"I'm no healer, I'm afraid." the old man said, over the clinking of pottery. "I sent for one, but Song hasn't returned yet." There was a swift staccato, footsteps on stone.

"Yes I have!" a woman said, breathless and excited. "You won't believe who I ran into!" The old man chuckled.

"Let me guess," the old man said. "One of those 'pro benders' you're always going on about?"

"Not quite," said a woman from the doorway. "It's been a while Iroh."

"Katara!" Iroh said, walking to greet his old friend. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

"Aang had some political business with the Earth King." she said with a shrug. "Something about cabbages." She glanced at Zulf. "Oh no... he's really pale. Is he sick?" Zulf began to hear a peculiar singing noise as Katara pulled water from a flask at her hip.

"Its alright. I'm an Ura, I'm always pale." Zulf said. He felt cool water against his head, and his vision started returning to normal.

"Ura?" Katara said. "I've never heard of you."

Zulf chuckled. "Not surprising ma'am. We're not exactly from around here."

The woman blurred into focus in Zulf's mending vision. She looked concerned. "You may have some memory loss... You've been in a fight Ura. A bad one by the looks of it."

"It's Zulf actually... I don't remember any fight." He strained to get up, barely wincing at the pains in his muscles. He looked at his arms... there were claw marks all over them. They were scabbed over, but very fresh. The healer passed the singing water over them.

"I've never seen wounds like these..." she said, uneasily. "The muscle is fine, but the chi paths are a mess..."

"What do you mean?" asked Iroh.

"They look scarred, half healed in places." She looked at Zulf, "Have you been doing anything to treat these?" Zulf thought for a moment.

"If I've been in a fight, I've probably been drinking Tonics." Zulf said.

"Wait, you have medicine that can heal chi?" Katar asked, disbelievingly.

"I don't know about chi, but Tonic's good for everything from paper cuts to stab wounds."

"You might still be concussed..." Katara said, focusing the efforts back on Zulf's head.

"If you don't mind me asking," Zulf asked, his eyes on the glowing water clinging to Katara's hands. "How the heck are you doing that?"

"Definitely concussed," Katara said. "I need you to focus, Zulf. What's the last thing you remember?" She began massaging his skull, trying to more precisely direct the healing.

"I remember... darkness," Zulf said, straining his memory. "Yellow eyes..."

In a great rush of pain and adrenaline, memories flooded back. He remembered fighting by Zia's side with the fang repeater while she kept those... things away from them with the pike. He remembered that huge... thing knocking the Kid himself into the mast like he was a stone in the road. He remembered the Knight showing up, keeping the attention of the monster. He remembered the Dusk and Dawn splitting apart. He bolted upright quick as a blink, the pain in his limbs completely forgotten. He turned to the old man.

"Where are the others?" he asked, panic in his voice.

"I'm sorry Zulf..." Iroh said. "You were the only one I found."

"Where?" Zulf asked.

"Zulf, you need bed rest," Katara said, trying to push him back into the bed.

"I can stand can't I?" Zulf said, standing his ground. "I have you to thank for that."

"You've got dozens of hairline fractures," Katara said. "I can't let you go in this condition."

"No..." Zulf said, bracing his legs. "You can't stop me." He bolted around her faster than she could even begin to react. Each step he took launched him by meters in explosive motion. There was nothing in his ears but bursts of howling wind. Nothing in his vision but the next step. He vaulted up the stairs in two bounds, the footfalls fading behind him unheeded. Three more steps took him out of the Jasmine Dragon, into the twilight of Ba Sing Se.


	4. Zulf's Story

Zulf stopped four quicksteps outside the Jasmine Dragon. Lines of intense pain crossed his legs... Katara hadn't been kidding about the fractures. "There he is!" shouted a voice behind him. He turned to see Katara and Iroh sprinting toward him. Zulf stepped again, another fifty feet disappearing behind him in a blink. The pain surged in his legs, but again he stepped. Again and again and again. He couldn't hear the wind anymore, only the throbbing of his heart filled his ears. Slowly his strength began to fade. Ura hunters could step all day and all night if they had to, but Zulf was no hunter. He was a diplomat with a body full of nearly broken bones. Each step he took worsened his legs, spreading the cracks just a little bit longer, a little bit deeper. Each step carried him by less and less distance. Fifty feet became forty. Forty became thirty. He knew in the back of his mind that he couldn't keep going like this, but his heart was far louder. His mind was filled with aching memories of loss. He couldn't do it again. He couldn't lose everything again. His leg gave out beneath him suddenly, sent him rolling against the pavement. Everything hurt when he came to a stop. He tried to pick himself up, but his legs wouldn't support him. He lay there for a time, his back on the cold stone as he stared up at the twilit sky. He lay there halfheartedly counting stars until a familiar beard appeared over him.

"I have to wonder," Iroh said, "where you planned to go." Zulf would have shrugged if he could.

"I'm not entirely sure," Zulf said. "I just had to do SOMETHING." His fresh bruises ached as he pulled himself up and sitting. "I've already lost everything once." A beautiful face came to his mind, filled with love and pain. A single tear rolled down his cheek. He shook his head, pushed the memory back down into the depths of his mind.

"I understand, Zulf." Iroh said, sitting down next to him. "But you cannot let your heart cloud your mind." The old man smiled. "You remind me of my nephew, when he was young. He was rash and impulsive for so long." The old man stared at the stars for a while, lost in memories. "Can you walk, Zulf?" he asked, getting to his feet.

"I don't think so," Zulf said wincing at the sharp pain in his right leg. "I'm pretty sure my leg broke from the strain."

"Lean on me, then." Iroh said. Zulf hooked an arm over the old man's shoulders.

"Iroh, was it?" Zulf asked. The old man nodded. "Did your nephew turn out alright?"

A grin split the old man's face. "Yes Zulf. He most certainly did."

Back at the Jasmine Dragon, Katara set back to treating Zulf. She wrapped paper bandages soaked in a white slurry around his leg, using thin wooden splints to keep it straight.  
"I'm sorry I can't heal your leg Zulf." Katara said, smoothing down another bandage. "With the condition of your chi paths, there's very little I can do. Your body will have to heal naturally." She waved her hands around the leg, like she was unraveling ethereal strings. Clear water was pulled away from the cast, leaving a stone shell in its stead.

"Remind me," Zulf asked. "How are you doing this?"

"I'm waterbending," Katara said, a look of concern on her face. "I thought I'd fixed that concussion."

"You did," Zulf said. "I wasn't kidding when I said I wasn't from around here.:

"But where in the world doesn't have benders?" Katara asked.

"I'm not from this world." Zulf said, looking down sadly. "I lost everything that day. My family. My love. My entire world."

"What happened?" Song asked.

"The Calamity happened," Zulf said bitterly. "The Calamity was a weapon of last resort. A final measure to end a war before it began. It didn't work."

"Zulf," Katara said, "You don't have to talk about it."

"No," Zulf said. "I need to tell someone. I've never even told the Kid. If anyone deserves it... its him." He took a deep breath and began to speak, to lay bare the terrible weight on his heart.

"The day the world ended was just after the best day of my life. I had spent the day in celebration after I became engaged to my fiance... but when I woke the next morning everything had changed. The world had been shattered by the Calamity. The entire city was in ruins, its districts peeled off in great chunks and cast about the sky. I don't remember how, but I made my way back to the Hanging Gardens... where I'd proposed. My hope faded there... There weren't any people there...only ashen statues. I found her there, standing right where I'd proposed to her like she was waiting for me. All I wanted was to hold her hand one last time... but when I did she just fell away. A cloud of dust on the wind and my memories were all she left behind."

Iroh was a portrait of stoic sadness at this point. Katara was crying silent tears, while Song was trying to contain sobs.

"I don't know how long I stood there, or what I was waiting for. I'd run out of tears to shed, so I just stared at the sky cursing Micia. Not sure if it was for taking Melody away, or for leaving me behind. All I know is that I felt his hand on my shoulder. 'We have to go. Please.' he said. Like he needed to know that someone else had survived. He brought me back to the Bastion. That was the first time he saved my life. I busied myself there for a while. Tried to forget. Tried to move on. The kid kept going out, bringing more back. The Cores. Weapons. Zia... but then he brought home that Journal."

"What's so bad about a journal?" Iroh asked.

"The words. It was all in Ura. I was the only one who could read the whole thing. The Calamity... the thing that had stolen everything from me... it was no accident. It was a weapon. My people were becoming peaceful, but the Caels were still paranoid. Blinded by their wall. They sought out secrets of science and alchemy that should've stayed buried. They built two things with that knowledge. They built the Calamity, and they built the Bastion. I lost it. All I wanted to do was destroy what they'd built. To take SOMETHING away from the Mancers that stole everything from me. I don't remember how, I just remember standing in front of the Monument, the Bastion's heart, and staring at the freshly mangled metal. Then I headed for the Skyway, and flew far on the winds. In my blind rage, I betrayed my friends. I united the remaining Ura and led an assault on the Bastion. I tried to stop the Kid from coming, I owed him that much. Tried to tell him not to return to the Bastion. He came anyway. He fought back the assault. And everyone he'd saved fought with him. Not everyone made it."

Iroh handed him a cup of tea. Zulf drained it in one gulp before he continued.

"We had the last piece. The last Shard was in Ura hands, deep in the Tazal terminals. And the Kid came for it. Everyone that stood against him fell. Every single one. My people turned on me then. They cursed me for incurring the Kid's wrath in petty revenge. They beat me within an inch of my life. And then the Kid was there, a bloodied stone battering ram over his shoulder. I expected him to drop it on my head to finish me off. Wouldn't have blamed him for it. But he put it down. Just dropped the damn thing. He hauled me up on his shoulders and made for the skyway. Every warrior the Ura had left was waiting for him at the only way out... but he didn't fight. He couldn't. He just marched on, ignoring the relentless hail of arrows. I figured we were both dead, so I started singing a funeral song. But then they stopped... I've never seen anything like it. One man fired one arrow, and his superior cut him down himself. I still don't understand why."

"Honor," Iroh said knowingly. "Even against impossible odds, he wasn't willing to leave a friend behind."

"I owe him so much..." Zulf said, solemnly. "Even after I stabbed him in the back, he dragged me back home." Silence filled the room.

"Don't think like that." Song said. "This was never against him, or your friends. You warned them didn't you? You tried to make sure they wouldn't get hurt."

"I was blind..." Zulf said. "I let my rage control me. I wanted revenge, and I put the only people who cared about me in danger because of it."

"Again, you remind me of Zuko." Iroh said, thoughtfully. "He redeemed himself a thousand times over. So can you."

"How am I supposed to do that?" Zulf asked. "How do I even begin to atone?" Iroh looked at him thoughtfully, stroking his beard.

"You have to look inside to find that, Zulf. You have to ask yourself the big questions."

"And which questions are those?" Zulf asked.

Iroh replied: "Who are you?' and 'What do you want?"

/Author Note

Okay so, sorry for the radio silence. Life got weird for a bit. I went for a longer chapter length this time, so we'll see if I can keep that up. This is the end of the Bastion characters explaining things though, and the exposition's nearly over. Thanks to everyone who's reading this. As always, reviews are appreciated.

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